


Nighttime Meetings

by emmawalters



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, child abuse mentions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 20:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17168969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmawalters/pseuds/emmawalters
Summary: Agent Stern isn't afraid of the dark.---A collection of times that Agent Stern and Barclay crossed paths under the moon.





	Nighttime Meetings

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [There's No Telling Where We're Going, Or How We Got Here At All](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100299) by [VigilantShadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigilantShadow/pseuds/VigilantShadow). 



> This is entirely the fault of VigilantShadow, who wrote a fic where Barclay and Stern go on a date on accident that I'm eagerly awaiting updates for and because I couldn't stop thinking about it, I wrote this at 4 AM instead of going to bed or working on the Hannigram Fan fiction I need to have a chapter finished for before the end of the month.
> 
> There will be more chapters, but no schedule. as I have the need to write these two, there will be more.

Agent Stern isn't afraid of the dark. Childhood night terrors gave way to true fear when he turned 14, learned that monsters could be human just as easily as they could be anything else. To be evil was not a trait unique to dragons and werewolves, hiding in their caves and forests. If anything, everything he'd been afraid of wore skin just like him, had hands as soft or calloused as his own, put on the socks in the morning and brushed their teeth just like him.

When Stern turned ten, his father gave him a pocket watch. Set in gently in his little hands, watched as he flinched at the cold metal, and crouched down to meet his eyes.

"This was my father's watch," he said. "And now, it's yours." A gift from father to son, into perpetuity. Did his grandfather gift bruises as gifts, too, he used to wonder, tell bedtime stories with explosions of rage and noise, screaming and hurling mugs of cold coffee at the wall, leaving the shards for someone else to handle in the morning?

What lies outside his sight cannot yet hurt him, and Stern has never seen a reason to fear it. There are so many other dangers, tangible and real, problems he can solve. Nothing else matters, when he can solve them.

This drive to fix, to heal, to right wrongs, it led him to the FBI. A world full of issues that Stern woke up every morning ready to combat, surprised not to find his carpet stained with coffee. To put on a tie instead of tennis shoes and know where his briefcase is instead of his backpack. The child who was terrified of other people still lives inside him.

Unexplained Phenomenon was the never the department Stern dreamed of working in. To travel the world, trying to hunt after things that didn't exist, it had sounded like a joke. He was assigned there as a punishment, and had entirely expected it to stay that way until he worked his way back up the ranks where he could help real people.

But most people don't know not to fear the darkness.

Stern traveled the country, and in every small town, every new motel with different bad coffee and another diner down the street, he meant people who were afraid. They told him stories that sounded like fairy tales, watched their children dragged into the woods by what they could only describe as monsters, people who swore they'd seen something that didn't belong. And at first, Stern pitied them.

Delusions are a strange thing, Stern told himself, and the human mind in all its power can create entire worlds. That was how Stern treated his cases. It was all serious, working himself to the bone, but only ever so he could get back on track.

Then came Kepler. Destroyed water parks and perfectly symmetrical sink holes with no geologic explanations. Videos of Bigfoot and an entire hotel full of people who couldn't stand to meet his eyes. And suddenly, Agent Stern understood how someone could be afraid of the dark. How someone could open their eyes, crawl out of bed, and feel the need to climb out of their own skin.

In a daze, the image of almost destroyed medical center and the sound of screams from the cellar close in his mind, Stern lays on the parking lot. It's winter, and the cracked asphalt is cold against his back, leaving to doubt that he is awake. Whatever is out there in the woods, taunting him and hiding from the world, it won't just be a figment of his imagination. It will be as real as the shattered mug on the floor, as real as the pocket watch in his pajama pants.

The stars are bright above him, hard to see through the trees unless he looks straight up. There's nothing to do, really, besides stare at them, wonder how many have planets surrounding them just as strange as the on he's on. In how many galaxies do the same problems persist, the careful balance of monsters real and imagined?

"What are you doing out here?" A voice behind him asks, incredulous. Stern doesn't not have to sit up to know it is Barclay. Gravel and loose rocks shuffle under footsteps as the other man comes closer. "It's freezing."

"Needed to think," Stern replies. It's the first lie he's told that wasn't related to a case since he came to Kepler.

"Chose a strange place to do it," Barclay says, and Stern can hear the shifting as he sits down, leans back to look up as well.

"Hardly the strangest thing to happen today."

Barclay laughs, then, a deep sound, entirely unexpected. It's the first actual kindness anyone at Amnesty Lodge has shown him, rather than just begrudging politeness.

"Do you really think you're going to find Bigfoot?" Barclay asks. There's something in his voice, a tone Stern can't decipher.

Or maybe he just isn't trying. Hasn't been since he drove past the sign welcoming him to Kepler. Everything felt too close to home, too much like he could see his father walking down the street, feel the smack of a grown, calloused hand across a far younger face. Would he be proud, Stern wonders? Would all the awards he's achieved and all the days he's stayed late at the office amount to approval, or would he still be found wanting.

"I hope not," Stern says. The honesty slips through his lips on accident, but he doesn't regret it. "There are enough monstrous people in the world. To combat literal monsters as well is more than I can bare."

When Stern sits up, looks at Barclay, there's an understanding look in his eyes and a small smile on his lips. Wordlessly, they stand and make their way back into the lodge, each heading to separate rooms, but laying in bed and turning off the light, the darkness around him feels less crushing.


End file.
